important decision of the Chase Court. The case went directly to the heart of Chase's core convictions regarding banking and monetary policy. While Chase favored a banking system that was national and centralized, he was initially opposed to the introduction of paper money and (contrary to President Abraham Lincoln's policy) believed U.S. Bank Notes should be convertible into gold. Willard v. Tayloe and the Legal Tender Cases were "the most significant set of cases decided by the Chase Court". The Willard decision is a classic example of a "conditional order of specific performance." Courts of equity often use a monetary calculus to judge hardship. Frustration of purpose can occur when the terms of a contract are applied literally and automatically without taking into consideration radical changes in the economic or physical environment. The Willard court was also wrestling with a 19th-century concept of money that was quickly becoming outmoded. This concept, known as "nominalism," assumed that money had an intrinsic value which did not change. The value of a gold coin of a certain size was always the value of such a gold coin, and inflation did not exist. Metallism (using coins of some valuable metal like gold or silver) is a nominalistic money system, one which the United States had moved away from with the National Banking Act of 1863. Nominalism was critical to the development of the law of contract and the modern industrial economy. Most nations adhered to it until the 20th century but abandoned it thereafter. This trend away from nominalism was under way at the time the Willard case came before the Supreme Court, and it represents the Court's attempt to reconcile this modern economics with contract law. The Supreme Court's ruling in Willard also was certainly influenced by the forthcoming Legal Tender Cases. The Court was ready to take up Hepburn v. Griswold, a case it would decide in 1870 and which would hold that the issuance of U.S. Notes was unconstitutional. Within a year, however, the Supreme Court would overrule Hepburn v. Griswold, and in Knox v. Lee, 79 U.S. 457 (1871) and Parker v. Davis, 79 U.S. 457 (1871) uphold the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act of 1862. It would more broadly do so again in Juilliard v. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421 (1884). The problem for the Willard court was how to craft a conditional order of specific performance, for any